


the language of love

by A_Starry_Night



Series: My Love [2]
Category: Broadchurch
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:15:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28267485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Starry_Night/pseuds/A_Starry_Night
Summary: They say absence makes the heart grow fonder; but what no one remembers that resentment can kill it too.
Relationships: Alec Hardy/Ellie Miller
Series: My Love [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2070834
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	the language of love

**Author's Note:**

> Not sure where this came from, but I knew I had plans to continue where I'd left off in I Just Want to Love You and inspiration struck this afternoon. Again it's going to be a pretty short one, I think. (And yes, I am still working on Sands of Time!)

Curses were not the only things that existed in this world of magic and the supernatural. There were secrets that existed in the bounds of the world, old forgotten warnings and tales that existed only as a child’s scary story at night. As much as spells and curses were used in lieu of control and power, a human heart was just as dangerous as any of those, and it killed those who could not control it.

A human heart, after all, was frail, and easily manipulated; and worst of all it was entirely self-inflicted. Those who died from their own human heart did so in agony, and anger, and resentment, cursing their loved ones and unforgiving of the fact that they had been the makers of their own destruction. 

It was a vicious circle, and it had started several centuries ago when England was still young.

A young maiden, Freya, was trained in the acts of magic, and had quickly grown to become of the most proficient witches of her age. She was cunning and ruthless when it came to herself, interested in advancing her own place in the world and had no interest in anything outside of her potential gain. 

And then, as in any tale, she met a boy. 

Freya saw him in the courtyard of the king, a young man of black hair and dark eyes, and she felt a strange flutter in her chest that she had never felt before. Unable to shake her sudden interest in him, she stood by one of the pillars in the courtyard and watched him as he walked. He was the princess’s lute player, a musician in the court of the royal family, and she had never seen him before except n passing. It was not love she felt in her heart then, however, but lust, and she decided she would have him as her own.

There were limits to spell-work, however—love could not be manipulated with it. There was no love potion that could be made that enchanted the intended target and enslave their every thought, and so Freya had to use her own cunning to draw his attention to her.

It happened to be that Freya was beautiful in her way, even if she seemed plain next to some other women of the day, and she made it so that she waylaid him in the courtyard two days later.

It did not go as planned. 

The boy, introduced as Arthur, had certainly seemed interested enough as he looked her up and down, but she had not realized how shy he was. There was something truly enchanting about him, however, and even though their first meeting didn’t go the way she had wanted she was determined to try again.

Again she met him, and again she was rebuffed. This cycle repeated over and over, with little to no interest on his part to a potential mating, interested in only loving her as a friend, even as Freya fell more and more in frustrated love with him. It was obsessive, and it was dangerous, and she cared not a whit for her studies or her spell work. 

And then came the day she found out he was betrothed to another lady of the court, and she flew into a murderous rage. Wildly jealous, Freya killed him for daring to show affection for any other human being other than herself, and for that she angered England itself because, unknown to her, Arthur had been a descendant of the tree nymphs. The magic in England’s soil was more wild in those ancient times, less forgiving, and it had much more of a hold on its own actions; for her actions, England cursed her for daring to harm and kill one of its own.

The wild jealousy in Freya’s heart planted a seed within its pumping flesh; a seed that, with time, grew into a thorn bush. Impervious to magics, and spell work, any attempts that Freya made to dislodge the agonizing plant from her body failed, and it only grew thicker and more tightly within her chest until it finally suffocated her. At the last she cursed the very idea of love, as she cursed Arthur’s name for his disinterest in her—unrepentant to the last that she had killed an innocent person.

And for that, England remembered and resented as well. The curse it had placed upon her was not enough; there were others like her, others who grew resentful and hurtful when their love was unreciprocated. For this the curse was placed upon them too, to be suffocated beneath their own inability to reconcile with themselves the idea that love was multifaceted, and could be shared in many different ways. 

In time the power of England’s magic waned and it fell asleep within the soil, lingering in only flashes and the uses of spells and curses that mere humans created. But still this curse remained, weakened and slow-acting, and it was lost to history as humanity advanced, leaving behind living off the land and protected by the high stone and glass and blacktop of modern day.

But still this curse could affect the unlucky few, those who truly loved deeply, and well, but could also resent. Such a curse was unfair, and cruel, but magic was cruel, and so the old days had been too; England took care of itself, after all, and what true interest in a human heart did earth and soil have?

From the time that Alec Hardy was able to finally say the words ‘I love you’, Ellie Miller’s days were numbered.


End file.
